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Forums - General Chat - Petition on UK customs charges

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I recently purchase a Blu-Ray disc from Amazon as part of a BOGOF offer. Just the one okay? Well today I got custom charges of £13.06 shoved in my face. I think that is more than the price of the disc that I paid for!!!

Seriously, what did you expect? As Mal says, they were considering lowering the limit a while back so you'd be best not to stir that particular hornet's nest. Since when did the government ever pay attention to online petitions, especially when they concern doing them out of duty?

I take your point, but there's no point pretending the allowance doesn't exist. A limit is useful for customs because it reduces the need to chase for stupidly small amounts of VAT and import duty. While raising the allowance might reduce the tax take, most personal allowances - such as for income tax and national insurance - do have some sort of index-linking. Why should the customs allowance be different?

In all honesty, you would be better off not focusing attention on the £18 limit... in the last couple of years there's been increasing pressure to actually have the limit decreased because companies like Tesco are taking advantage of this facility. One of the main reason why it's still there is because local Jersey and Guernsey employers like Play would probably go out of business.

As most of you know, buying anything costing more than £18 from overseas will mean you have to pay VAT and import duty, and a whacking great £8 'customs handling charge' from Royal Mail. I've started a petition on the Number 10 website to try and get the £18 allowance increased - it's been static for years - and abolition of the customs handling charge, which should be included in delivery charges paid upfront. If you want to sign up, please visit:http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/customsfees